Amiga to PC Network

Amiga to PC Network

Does anybody know if these kits sold on ebay work?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMIGA-PC-NETWO...ht_1890wt_1165

Cheers Jon

[prowler]

Yes, it does work (I have a copy of Ami-PC and the cable), but for that price you'd be better off buying Amiga Explorer from Cloanto and making up a null modem lead to use with it.

I don't think I would feel confident making a null modem cable.

I had a bad experience trying to network two amiga years ago through the parallel port.

Cheers

Jon

[prowler]

Well, then, you should go for the eBay Amiga to PC Networking solution.

As I have said, it does work. However, all you will get from that seller is pirated software on a CD-R in some slick packaging and the cable.

Edit: I forgot that you will get an Amiga-formatted floppy disk with the Amiga-side software on it too.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Toki

Does anybody know if these kits sold on ebay work?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMIGA-PC-NETWO...ht_1890wt_1165

You don't want to buy anything from these guys anyhow. A huge counterfeit operation run from Swindon formed by former Amiga shop owners.

They must make many thousands £££ each month selling hundreds and hundreds of discs illegally in the grey area of retro-computing for Amiga, PC and emulators.

In this case the software is free and the cable costs about 99p.

Plus it is one of the worst solutions around. If you have an A1200 just buy a PCMCIA 10Mbit ethernet card. You can get one from Ebay for around £5 with connector dongle. Drivers are free on Aminet and TCP/IP stack can be found there too.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Toki

I don't think I would feel confident making a null modem cable.

I had a bad experience trying to network two amiga years ago through the parallel port.

Cheers

Jon

PM me your address, I'll send you one FOC

[Info-Seeker]

not for anything, but you can get a null modem cable or adapter almost anywhere, including radio shack... The Adapters look like gender changers. I am curious what kind of cable this thing uses, is it serial or Parallel?

You might also want to consider the network option mentioned earlier. I have all my Amiga's on the network, wouldn't want to have it any other way. It was a royal pain setting up the first few without anything on the network, but I was lucky enough to start with a 4000, so I threw a cd-rom drive in it which made life a lot easier... But a full on network is the way to go. With AmiTCP, inetd and standard services are installed, at the users discretion, so you can just ftp stuff over to the Amiga when needed....

Oh, and Cloanto's AmiExplorer works quite well over the network, which is also much faster than any serial or parnet link.

[Hewitson]

Null modem is serial (hence the name).

[rossb]

Hi,

I stupidly! bought one of these kits a while back, and to be frank they're crap! The cable supplied is 25 pin (pc end) and I tihnk it is centronics parallel so pretty useless on most modern PC's.

As the others said I would go with a PCMCIA Ethernet card and/or Amiga Explorer and a 'proper' NULL modem cable

Regards,

Ross.

[Hewitson]

I doubt it rossb. I've only ever seen the Centronics plugs on printers themselves, not printer ports.

[rkauer]

You can Parnet an Amiga and a pc, but IIRC, there is no network software to use the pc as an internet server for the Amiga using the parallel port. For serial connection they exists in more than one package.

[Hewitson]

There sure is. PLIP driver is in Linux kernel.

[rkauer]

But there is a Parallel-LIP for winblows machines?

[Info-Seeker]

is there software out there that will allow you to access the stuff on the pc from the Amiga? I know I can use Amiga Explorer from the Amiga Forever package to transfer stuff from the pc to the Amiga, but I would like to be able to map the pc drives over the network so I can access them from the Amiga if possible. It sounds like the program at the beginning of the thread would do it if it works over the network. Anyone have the name of something, or an app to do it?

[Jope]

smbfs

[Hewitson]

Samba is what you want, I've never got smbfs to work on the Amiga side but mounting the Amiga drive on the PC should be quite easy.

Having said that, Amiga Samba is not 100% reliable. I recommend FTP if you want a solution that will always work.

[alexh]

I find that AmigaExplorer is also reliable. It is now shareware (i.e. free)

[Hewitson]

Hmm, as much as I hate Cloanto I might have to take a look at that..

The Amiga doesn't exactly have a wealth of brilliant FTP clients to select from, I'm yet to find one that even supports downloading directories!

[alexh]

AFAIR, AmigaExplorer is Amiga server only. The client lives on the PC side.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I'm yet to find one that even supports downloading directories!

AmiTradeCenter?

[Hewitson]

I did try that, it crashed on my machine for some reason. (A1200/060/3.9)

[orange]

what i did is make huge archive (store) of all whdload games starting with some letter. and transfer that one file with samba or ftp. (ftp should be a bit faster). then uncompress it on amiga if you got space.
IIRC, I had to use zip archive, because rar wants too much RAM. maybe lha would work too with huge archives. ( set working directory..)

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I did try that, it crashed on my machine for some reason. (A1200/060/3.9)

Double check you have the correct MCCs, it is very picky about the version number.

[Methanoid]

Thread revival

Wasnt Parnet always faster than serial versions? I need to link an Amiga with a W7 PC server. Whats the best solution for me without spending loads on network cards.. File copying is priority but if I could also use internet over it so much the better.

Well guys - some advice pls?

[Jope]

I'm afraid your best solution for Windows 7 is Amiga Explorer and a serial cable.

PC2Am + a parallel cable really only works reasonably with a Win9x machine.

[Methanoid]

Who has Win9x now? I hear that with Userport addon it can work... I just ordered a serial/parallel card (parallel for Atari ST and serial for Amiga, since I found a PCMCIA wireless card for A1200 anyway)

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Who has Win9x now? I hear that with Userport addon it can work...

Yes, it can sometimes be coaxed to work with the userport driver, but brace yourself for disappointment.

And yeah, no-one has win9x any more, but that doesn't change the fact that pc2am doesn't work properly with anything better. :-)

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Jope

And yeah, no-one has win9x any more...

That's just not true.

Originally Posted by Jope

And yeah, no-one has win9x exclusively any more...

Fixed.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Jope

I'm afraid your best solution for Windows 7 is Amiga Explorer and a serial cable.

PC2Am + a parallel cable really only works reasonably with a Win9x machine.

One option is to run Windows Virtual Machine to effectively run an old operating system within Windows 7 - then you'll have no problems!

I'm looking at possibly using my USB-to-Serial adaptor as this new laptop doesn't even have PCMCIA port/parallel/serial! Argh!... Or I could go with networking via PCMCIA card on Amiga A600HD although, I think it may require RAM upgrade as standard 1MB RAM.

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

One option is to run Windows Virtual Machine to effectively run an old operating system within Windows 7 - then you'll have no problems!

I'm looking at possibly using my USB-to-Serial adaptor as this new laptop doesn't even have PCMCIA port/parallel/serial! Argh!... Or I could go with networking via PCMCIA card on Amiga A600HD although, I think it may require RAM upgrade as standard 1MB RAM.

Have you actually TRIED that and confirm it works or is this theory?

[Jope]

Originally Posted by prowler

That's just not true.

Yep, I actually have a P166MMX kicking around with Win98SE just for all kinds of legacy needs. :-)

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

One option is to run Windows Virtual Machine to effectively run an old operating system within Windows 7 - then you'll have no problems!

So the VM would get direct access to the real parallel port and there are no timing problems? Are you sure of this? Personal experience?

This I must see. What virtual machine host do you recommend? VMWare? Virtualbox? Microsoft Virtual PC? :-)

[Methanoid]

Some guy at Amibay claims this works (VMWare) and also sells "special" cables claiming Laplink cables dont work. Everyone else on the net seems to say Laplink parallel cables DO work.

Also, apparently a version of DOSBox works with parallel ports so maybe thats the easiest way?

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Some guy at Amibay claims this works (VMWare) and also sells "special" cables claiming Laplink cables dont work. Everyone else on the net seems to say Laplink parallel cables DO work.

Yep laplink cables work fine.

The special cable is 8-bit, laplink is 4-bit. The 8-bit cable might not work with all PC parallel ports, but I had good success with it with many different PCs back when a P233MMX was the fastest computer in my home.

[bdb]

Lap Link cables do work and the originals are of high quality (yellow is serial, blue is Parallel). The idea of using a VM in Win 7 is good for 2 reasons: 1) Win 7 does not want to talk to anything that is non-windows, 2) THe Win 7 version above "Home" includes a setup for Win-XP (there is a download involved), but the setup provides a FULL XP install.

I wish I had thought of that the last time I wasted a week trying to connect to my Win 7 PC. Samba goes in easy as pie if you follow "The Idiots Guide to Samba on the Amiga." It just won't connect to Win 7.

This 4-bit stuff is "4-WIRE" which is the defination of a serial cable connection; it is 1-bit at a time -- 2 wires for data, 1 wire to tell it to send data, 1-wire to tell it to receive data. The 8-bit is the defination of parallel, at least on the printer connection. The serial transfer rate (Baud) can change from a lowly 50 bits per second up to 230K bits per second and is determined by lots of factors, but the parallel port has only one transfer rate.

I don't believe Amiga Explorer touches the parallel side of things, but the ParNet software does (albeit not likely under anything but Win 95/98, don't know but someoune could try). There was a software program to go between Amiga's that used the floppy drive port and was the fastest way, but that was about 20 years ago.

If all fails, spend 12 bucks on a CF card reader, format the card in Fat95 (google it for Amiga) or even NTFS, and sneaker-net it across the room. A Gigabyte or two would take an hour or more the serial/parallel cable way.

[Methanoid]

err Win7 XP mode will still have the kernel mode issue with Parallel port.. You need 9x/ME or earlier.. or use DosBox (special version)

[bdb]

Don't know myself, but I take it that you have tried?

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Jope

Yep, I actually have a P166MMX kicking around with Win98SE just for all kinds of legacy needs. :-)



So the VM would get direct access to the real parallel port and there are no timing problems? Are you sure of this? Personal experience?

This I must see. What virtual machine host do you recommend? VMWare? Virtualbox? Microsoft Virtual PC? :-)

If I'm completely honest, I have not used it for the purpose of Amiga, however, I have used it to get support for using 'legacy'/old parallel and serial ports for purposes of JTAG and older hardware, so I gather it may also work for Amiga? Microsoft Virtual PC is what I used.

[bdb]

I'm sorry, I was talking about getting AExplorer to get around Win 7's restriction on computer connections by using the VM with Win XP

I don't think Win 7 cares a hoot about the serial & parallel ports

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by bdb

I'm sorry, I was talking about getting AExplorer to get around Win 7's restriction on computer connections by using the VM with Win XP

I don't think Win 7 cares a hoot about the serial & parallel ports

Sorry, I'm not familiar with these restrictions, care to clarify?

[bdb]

Ok, "restrictions" is a poor word choice, but has anybody been able to connect an Amiga to a Win 7 computer (not a Win 7 server)? When I last tried 3 months ago, I spent a week going through every post I could find, started a thread (on another Amy web site) and got nowhere; one nice person just flat out told me it was impossible.

So if this information is wrong, please tell me how to do it.